


Never Told No One (But We Looked So Cute)

by KittyViolet



Category: Halsey (Musician), Lorde (Musician)
Genre: 100 Letters, Bad at Love, Class Differences, Dressing Room Sex, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, First Time, Green Light, Popstar RPF, RPF, The dirty parts are all in chapter two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 10:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13121514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyViolet/pseuds/KittyViolet
Summary: Good girls need bad girls. Do bad girls need good girls?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [therjolras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/therjolras/gifts).



> London. Late 2016.

Ashley has not been having a good show. Or a good trip to England (it's not her first, but close). Or a good day. Or a good really anything. It's fine that she learned she was going on first, of four acts. It's fine that the live-TV music awards had an audience that looked too small, too old, too full of people who were there because a friend of a friend had comps, not there to see the acts at all, and certainly not there to see her.

 

She knows exactly what a room full of 500 people who have listened to Badlands all day every day look like, she also knows what a room full of kids and not-kids-any-more having fun looks like, and this room was neither; the vibe was black dresses, red carpet, worn-for-the-reaction-shot "club wear," the kind with zippers it doesn't need and holes it shouldn't have, and even the cheap seats looked expensive. The people in the front row (tapings are weird, live TV is super-weird) had very, very visible sleek shoes, and Josh would probably know the brand-- Ashley just knows they cost more than she'd make in a year, more than any one she could hang out with would make in a year, for any year before 2015.

 

But Ashley-- she asks herself, going over the bad gig in her mind, from the dressing room afterwards-- why were you looking at anybody's shoes? You should look at the audience, at the keyboard player, at the bass player, sideways at the curtains-- anywhere but down, when you're front and centre as she was. As she is, now, 24-7; as she had better somehow learn to be. (Will she ever see Tay again? Will Tay show her how? Is anybody used to it like Tay?)   Ashley is no Tay and never will be, but she's finally gotten used to strangers who think they've got a special bond with her, fangirls and fanboys and beautiful NB kids with four-colour, two-tasseled hair who hear "Castle" and exclaim in a crowd, or tweet, or pass notes on silver paper to security, something like "You're writing down my life!"

 

And this show came very close to ruining that feeling for the year. Three songs per act, as agreed with the somewhat oily TV people, and then you're off; she had "Colors" and "Gasoline" and the new one, the breakup song that told the world that she should never have dated that guy, released. The first two went fine despite jet lag-- she might be so tired she can't remember any of her names, but she can remember the words to "Gasoline."

 

Then the new one. She was ready: the keyboard shimmer just right, the DATs set, the lights all 72 hot shades of blue, and then when she started to launch "100 Letters"-- that new song that means so much to Ashley right now, the one that says she had not just a life before Lido but a life, a performing and writing life, that can survive him-- this drunk rando with the posh accent started yelling "Show us your Americana!"  stretching out the raspy vowels to exaggerate her American accent, turning her song title into a word for tits, like he and his friends-- Republicans, no, Tories, they're called here-- thought young people's pain was just their entertainment, like he and his buds still owned the world.

 

"Fuck you," she said, and the mike picked it up, and of course she went back to the song, but then did anyone hear the arpeggios underneath the verses? Did anyone hear the way she's learned to lean into the repeated words in the chorus, the ones she crossed out in her notebook and then wrote again and again? Did anyone fucking care that Ashley from the Internet, Ashley from God knows how many basements and bad scenes and ratty couches in three of five boroughs plus 25 different towns in north Jersey, had flown to London at somebody else's expense to perform on national TV, under light after light after light after light? Maybe they cared the way you care about the characters on some cringe sitcom: maybe they see her as a ridiculous caricature, as somebody else's problem, as a specimen. Maybe they still think they'll always be better than her.

 

The meme from this show, and there will be a meme, will be that she said "Fuck you" to a fan. Like that dude was a fan. (Dudes.)

  

And then and then and then. Ashley put her own best sneer into the last chorus-- she almost gave him everything!-- and then the pain turned physical, and she couldn't wait to get off that tiny stage. There's not even a green room here, just a big lockable dressing room, where everything's silver and soft and comfortable and 25 kinds of tea await her above the minibar (with five kinds of gin inside), where the stabbing in her sternum could subside.

 

In the dressing, alone, head on the table under the monitor, she closes her eyes and tries to remember every kind word she's exchanged with everyone she'd met since she landed at Gatwick. Then she tries to remember some money numbers. Equipment rental, international withholding... Dry, sure, but if you can't be your own business, you'll end up being somebody else's; what was her share of the fee for those lights? Who's handling the arena show in Quebec? Now that she knows her music can make her a living, thinking about how she makes a living has become a way that she calms down.

 

Except today it doesn't work. She blocks the next two acts out of her mind completely-- Ed something? Sam something? Paul from Maximo something?--  but the last one gets through: it's Ella, and she's performing a new one too. She looks up. Ella's wearing black, of course, but some new shade of black, almost grey, like the last bits of a storm cloud after a storm, and what she's singing is new. Like, really new. Like, innovation. It sticks in the mind.

 

The last time Ashley and Ella talked Ella kept switching her gaze back and forth between her seat mate and her notebook; Ashley is quite aware that Ella writes and writes and writes and half the material never makes it into an iPhone, much less into a fully arranged song. Ella, educated, confident Ella, Ella who smirks when she smiles, Ella can choose. And this song sounds like a good choice. There's something about sharks, and then something about waiting for the right moment, but the moment's not right, there's a green light and it never comes, and the song clicks-- wasn't that how it felt, at the end, with Lido? You wait for the moment to show you're independent, but if you could recognise the moment, if you could take what you wanted, you'd already be the person you wanted to be, the person you know you can't become?

 

God, is Ashley a fan? She looks for Ella's shoes. They're white and grey and silver with tiny x's down the front and they cost who knows what, and Ashley puts her fingers, all her fingers, up into the blue hair she's growing back out, the blue hair that would curl if she didn't fix it, and yanks her own head up to look back at the monitor and there's Ella, perfect, prepared, so independent, that Ella, so self-made and so damn rehearsed, belting out a final confident chorus with hundreds of DATs massed behind her, and there's applause, a rolling blackout of applause, and Ashley can't figure out whether she hates Ashley, or whether she hates Ella, or whether she hates the way she's never satisfied, or whether she just hates her ex, and then the door is a rectangle of soft silver light and Ella walks into the room.


	2. Chapter 2

Ella looks surprised that there's no green room (that's why she had to go back into her dressing room); she does not look surprised to see Ashley here. Either she doesn't know it's the wrong dressing room, or she's looking for Ashley, or looking for someone else. 

 

Apparently she's looking for validation. "Ash!" she exclaims, in that fluid accent, as if they'd been hanging out at the Auckland waterfront (Ashley knows there's a waterfront, she's seen it on TV, hasn't been there yet).  "I wanted you to hear the new one; what did you think? Tell me everything! I value your thoughts!"

 

And the truth is that Ashley loved it. The new song's the best. It's also about where she's been, recently, in her life.

 

But the truth is, also, that Ashley has had enough: enough of the guy she'd just left, enough of other people thinking she doesn't write her songs when she writes practically all of them, enough of writer dudes assuming she can't play her instruments because she's a girl (and has to move around on stage to sing), enough of being celebrated as a sign of the American dream when in fact the American dream is keeping 99% of the people with her background and her issues from ever leaving their first boyfriends' basements, enough of being taken-- by pretty much all people she sees every day who are not teenage girls-- either too seriously or not seriously enough; either she's a sign of what's wrong with the Internet generation, or she's the star of an after school special. Don't do drugs, kids. Don't date people who do drugs, kid. (At the time every single person Ashley knew who was under 30 did drugs.)

 

That may not be what people think but it's what Ashley suspects that people feel, and if she hadn't said that thing online about bipolar, bisexual, biracial, two (as in bi) years ago, it might feel even worse. At least people know she has moods. And this is a mood.  Not a low mood; an angry mood.Not a fair mood; an unfair one, because Ella as Lorde is extraordinary, but she's also a product of the upper middle class, of every single kind of institutional support a girl can get, of the world's best mom and ocean views and sweet boys and singing lessons and a carefully authentic super-staged launch and permission to date who she dates (sort of), and now she's a paragon of quirky but safe independence, and Ashley-- Halsey-- is the new Americana. Show us your Americana. Also Ella doesn't even try to play an instrument. Nobody minds.

 

"WTF, Ella," Ashley says. "It sounds great-- the last one sounded super-great-- but I don't know, it's weird to hear a breakup song about someone you won't break up with, and you look so confident while you're singing it even though it's about insecurity, it feels almost fake, IDK, like you're better off than you let on... maybe it's the blocking here? that stage could make anybody look too tall."

 

Ella's still standing just inside the doorway. She closes the door, so that the only lights come from the dressing table mirrors (which is a lot of lights). She looks confused.

 

Ashley isn't finished. "It's not-- Ella, you sound great, you always sound great, but it's weird to me to watch this one, OK? You've had everything, you've had a whole fucking game plan with everybody on your side, and you're singing a new song that means so much to you about how it's so hard for you to be independent? I mean, the vi-I-IV progression in the verse is cool" (does Ella even know basic harmonies? Ashley wonders; now that's a dig) "and the way it builds is kind of great and it's a radio hit, and yeah" (Ashley has one hand balled in an almost-fist) "but do you ever feel like a hypocrite, like super role model girl doing her own thing and rebelling, when you know you're just what mom and dad, and all the moms and dads out there, probably want? I mean, does it ever hit you, how picture-perfect safe your world tour Goth rebellion turned out to be? The song's great when I hear it for songwriting, and you know how much I think about songwriting, but when I look at who's singing and how" (Ashley realises how hard she has been looking up into those brown eyes) "I think I'm being invited to see through it? Don't you ever decide to do anything, for real, yourself, instead of just waiting for green lights? I mean, we're not teenagers now, not you and not me, even if people still think we are. I mean"-- now she's really out of control, but she can't not say what's in her mind, it's like being in the middle of a rollercoaster-- "ever since we've met, don't you think you just do everything other people expect?"

 

And then, of course, Ella kisses her. Suddenly, hard, leaning down, because Ashley is still in her chair, half slumped into the cushions, and Ella takes the shorter girl by both shoulders and squeezes, and then lets go, and the kiss goes on. 

 

The chair, it turns out, survives Ella's leap forwards into it, onto or into Ashley's lap, and once it is very clear that Ella is welcome, that Ashley does not want her to stop, the girls have their arms around each other. Ashley thinks: bi doesn't mean I'm safe ground for experiments; it doesn't mean automatic advice for the lovelorn; it doesn't mean any straight girl who wants to figure herself out can knock on my door. 

 

Except, if the straight girl is Ella, it totally does. Their kiss is propulsive, tongue on tongue, and when the tongues withdraw their noses touch, it's like a first kiss except way better, because both parties know how to kiss, although it's unclear-- the enthusiasm suggests not-- whether Ella has ever before kissed a girl.

 

She has, on the other hand, had help talking dresses off. This one has twenty hooks in the back for those fluttery smoky grey panels; it takes a while, it helps them slow down, it's a way that Ashley can show she means it and Ella can show she hasn't changed her mind, and it ends with Ashley's hand on Ella's right hip and her other hand slowly tracing a melody-- or maybe it's a chord progression-- down her exposed left side.

 

About ten minutes of slow kissing and slow-moving hands later, Ella's smoke cloud of a dress is on the dressing room floor, two pairs of tights are ruined forever and balled up and thrown away, and both girls are just in their camisoles and panties. Ella's voice is not her singing voice; it's higher, and she's saying something to Ashley about how Ashley is for real, Ashley has to show her how to do something or other, something with hands, something Ashley is already doing.

 

Ashley is also lost in Ella's hair. Who wouldn't get lost in all Ella's hair?

 

Ashley has worked one hand around Ella's thighs, tracing her butt cheeks, into her underwear, licking her chin, her neck, behind her ear, and then her other hand is between the Auckland girl's legs, moving up and in, with her thumb in one place, and two fingers in another, and then Ashley reaches into the matte black purse inside the shiny black purse she carries almost everywhere and there is a small clean rabbit-shaped device, and it goes in between Ella's legs and stays there.

 

Ashley's turn is considerably more leisurely. There is a lot of lying down on that buttermilk-colored dressing room carpet, which-- props to the TV people-- is soft enough that once you lie down on it you can stay a while; there are a lot of gliding sounds. Y as in yes. Mmmm as in mmmm. Y as in yes, definitely. A very shiny camisole comes off. Her own panties come off. Ashley has her own hand between her hips, and they contract, and contract, and squeeze until they could crush the world and remake it in Ella's own image, and then she's as relaxed as she's been in days. Weeks. All year.

 

There's nowhere they have to be afterwards, except their respective hotels; they can stay flat on the carpet until the time spent would make managers, drivers, paps, too suspicious. So-- they're both good at timing by now, at finding moments for themselves-- ten minutes to talk.

 

"You're-- you're good at this," Ella says. "You're so good at this. At songs, and, you know, at this."

 

Ashley smiles. "But I'm bad at love."

 

"We can fix that."

 

"You think you can fix everything."

 

"I think no one should give up until they have to give up. Also, I like hanging out with you. I learn from you. In case you fucking didn't know."

 

"I'm learning from you," Ashley says. "You look great. I resent the hell out of you. Let's hang out more."

 

"Let's." Ella shoves Ashley so that they roll over and leave wide trails in the pile of the carpet, which is-- props to the TV people-- stunningly soft.  They are just holding hands.

 

"I don't want to be your educational experience," Ashley says. "Maybe I do. How many times have you actually had sex?"

 

"Guess," Ella retorts. Ashley offers a number.

 

"Lower." Ashley offers Ella another number.

 

Ella says nothing. "Lower?" Ashley asks?

 

"Depends what you mean by sex."

 

"Was this sex?" Ashley asks.

 

"I think so?" It comes out, in that accent, as a question. Not so much "What do you think?" as, closely paraphrased, "Can we try it again?"

 

But if they stay in a dressing room together much longer, someone will figure it out. "Come to New York," Ashley says, and Ella nods. Ashley is trying to fit back into her camisole and the pearly top she's got to go with her big black belt, her pearl-studded retro jeans.

 

She's dressing too fast and the mirror is unforgiving, at least when she sees herself in it. Ella bends over to kiss her one more time before taking the back (the escape-from-paps) door. "Let's hang out again," says Ella, looking into the dressing room mirror once they've both stood up, and kissing Ashley on the cheek, as if she were taking a selfie in her mind, the selfie she could never take for real, in case somebody hacked her phone: the two friends, the two lovers, in the one moment that could ever hold their best selves. Blue hair, long black hair. Ella's quizzical smile, her shoulders thrown back; Ashley's lashes, the intensity of her look at herself, at her friend, at the four walls they have to themselves for a couple more minutes. Ashley wants those selves to stay. Or, if they can't stay, she wants to get them back. "We look so cute," she says.

 

Ella blows her a kiss and smirks-- when Ella smirks it means she likes you-- and then really does head out by the secret anti-pap backdoor.

 

Ashley takes out her notebook. "Knew a boy back home in Michigan..."


End file.
